Hey tom,

First, I think you should add an advanced options button to the board designer that starts off, so that factory stuff doesn't get confusing to "noobs."  

Second, I think you should add a new feature for me to go under that menu.

I would like a restriction on continents that only allows them to activate if the continent has at least "n" units.  Including the units that are required to leave behind in a territory when abandon is off, the entire continent must have "n" units for it to activate and grant a bonus.  You would be able to set "n" when setting the continent.  Also, if you could set negative numbers to imply that it shuts off if you have more units than that number in the continent.

(as if I don't already) I would love you forever.

Thanks,

CrazENygma 

I definitely support the advanced button. Keep the feature minimal and simple for beginners, then they can learn as they go. 

This new feature would certainly have tons of applications. are you thinking that all the territories in the continent would need 'n' units before the continent is activated, or that the designer would select the territory/territories that are necessary? 

Jigler wrote:

I definitely support the advanced button. Keep the feature minimal and simple for beginners, then they can learn as they go. 

This new feature would certainly have tons of applications. are you thinking that all the territories in the continent would need 'n' units before the continent is activated, or that the designer would select the territory/territories that are necessary? 

Progressive Disclosure FTW!

Jigler wrote:

I definitely support the advanced button. Keep the feature minimal and simple for beginners, then they can learn as they go. 

This new feature would certainly have tons of applications. are you thinking that all the territories in the continent would need 'n' units before the continent is activated, or that the designer would select the territory/territories that are necessary? 

I think the designer should set the territory as a continent, add or disable the factory, then choose the number of units required to be held in the continent for it to function.

Ed, are you just thinking of single territory continents?  What if the continents has more than 1 territory?  Does each territory get a separate minimum before it functions, or is there a total # of units between all territories in the continent to turn it on?

Seems like this could be a workaround for the issue of having to have to turn on abandon to get factories to turn off other continents.  (i.e. the desire to have a per territory minimum).  Is that what you were thinking with it?

Initially my thinking was 1 territory continents, but I think it could work with any size continent, as long as the total number of units in the continent meets the requirement.

It makes for a much easier system of counting turns and things like that.  I can also count how many units are in an area and make effects based on that.  I've already written a system to do this, but it's buggy, slow, and takes 2500 continents or so, instead of... many fewer.

Are there any designers other than Ed who would use it?  The restriction feature sounds like a "programming" type feature.  I'm trying to think of a "natural" use for it.

Also, I'm not convinced that there needs to be a "simple" designer option.  If options are hidden, designers may never take the time to find them.  Take a program like MSWord. It doesn't start out in "noob" mode.  

My feeling is that eventually the designer may need an overhaul because it has been pieced together over time, but I think the it is laid out reasonably well considering.  I have helped a few newer designers in dev games, and my sense is that they pick it up pretty fast.  It's certainly no more complicated to use than a program like paint.net.

Ratsy has a board where you stock units in one location.  Most games with Doomsday devices could use it.  You could use it for a negative continent, so that if you overstack an area, you lose it.  It could force people to use 1 unit behind in some territories.  It can count turns.  It can track units.  It can do all sorts of things.

As for hiding advanced options... I think that designing a game is overwhelming to new designers.  That's why you have to turn on things like Dual Layer and Custom Fog.  You have to turn on custom scenarios and such.  I think you should have to turn on factories to be honest.  The menus are confusing and complicated if you have no intention of using them.  So, since we have so many advanced options, I figured it would be best to keep them under an advanced menu that you have to enable, just like you do for some features already.

Could you give some specific example of how the restriction might work or doesn't work? For instance.  Take Territories a, b, and c - all part of a continent that produces 1 army in hand. How does restriction of 10 work on such a set up?  If you had 5 on a and 5 on b (and none on c) would you still get the bonus?

Edward Nygma wrote:

..you have to turn on things like Dual Layer and Custom Fog.  

If there was no toggle for this I'm not sure it would be any more confusing.  If, next to the "Upload/Download/Delete buttons, there was a nice little reminder.. (*Optional*), it would be just fine.

You have to turn on custom scenarios and such.

This is actually more confusing to me than not having the toggle.  I'm pretty sure I got pretty frustrated when I started to create a scenario and it didn't work because I did not "activate" the feature.

As it stands right now, when you create a continent - the Factory feature is labeled as "Disabled." I think that's pretty clear. I.e., ..optional.  Having to turn on the feature would be like having to turn on "tables" in the options section of a word processor before you could create a table. 

In my opinion, if it's too confusing to use, it doesn't need to be noobyfied, it just needs a better owners manual.

M57 wrote:

Could you give some specific example of how the restriction might work or doesn't work? For instance.  Take Territories a, b, and c - all part of a continent that produces 1 army in hand. How does restriction of 10 work on such a set up?  If you had 5 on a and 5 on b (and none on c) would you still get the bonus?

It's more like this:

You have to fuel your rocket ship by mining space rocks.  This space rock deposit is territories A, B, and C.  I want to make it so that if I hold that deposit, I get +1 in my fuel tank.

My fuel tank is a territory with a restriction of 5 that auto-captures your opponent's capital (let's say the moon for theme's sake).  

I want to require you to mine for 5 turns before you win.  So I set a restriction of 5 on my rocket fuel so that I only win when it has 5 units in it.

M57 wrote:

Are there any designers other than Ed who would use it?  The restriction feature sounds like a "programming" type feature.  I'm trying to think of a "natural" use for it.

I think I would probably end up using it once I wrap my head around it a bit more.  I can imagine some kind of map where you could have farms that would allow you to have more units on a territory.  Imagine a territory that has a factory that kicks in if you have more than 5 units on that puts a -1 on itself.  Then you have a nearby farm that does the same thing, but with a +1.  It's not quite that simple, but I think on that track, you could have a territory that reduces to 5 units at the beginning of your turn, but farms allow you to keep more than 5 on it.

I'm also all for Progressive Disclosure.  I think having some kind of barriers to the advanced features of the site is a great idea.  This could be experience based barriers, something you have to turn on in your settings, or just a button to click.  IMO this site is way to complicated for the average web user who otherwise might be interested in some games.  Casual gaming is a huge market and wargear might get more of that market if it was more newb friendly.   It really doesn't matter either way for me personally, but I see friends & family who are not so computer savvy struggle with some of the advanced.

You could do really cool economy things.  You could have 5 continents on one farm with different restrictions, so if you put more units there, you produce more at your granary.  Then your barracks drains from your granary and produces military units that only produce based on a restriction on your granary.

Now you have an economy, allocate labor to farms, farms produce food, soldiers can be produced if you have enough food to support them.  Labor can be produced with food assuming you can supply them with housing... etc.

OK, I would probably find a use for it.  I prefer to use features naturally (or transparently). I.e. in a way that the player understands the mechanism that makes the board work.

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of games where there are long lists of relationships that need to be kept track of, and I see this as a feature that would enable a proliferation of these types of boards.  But that's just me.

As far as preference is concerned, I am much more interested in a Movement Count feature, which would emulate the effects of terrain, introduce the concept of unit autonomy, and significantly reduce the need for the neutral wall in designs.

Granted, the Restriction feature looks easier to implement, but Movement Count is much more of a game changer.

I'm not totally against the idea, but I'm skeptical of how it might be effectively implemented. I can't even think of a program I've purchased with progressive disclosure. We're not talking about players here; we're talking about designers.  If users of a paint program had to press a button in some options menu to enable "effects" or "transparency", there'd be a lot of calls to customer service and quite a few reviews where the reviewer complained, "There are no effects!"

I've got to believe that the type of person that attempts to design a map on a site like this is use to working with programs that have features they don't use or even understand.  If they're anything like me, they start out using just a few features and just seeing the other unused features sitting there sparks curiosity, and they might try them out.

To give an other example, Often I'm working on something and I think - Gee, wouldn't it be nice if..  Now I'm not necessarily going to go through a progressive disclosure list to see if it's possible - I'm working in the moment, and I want to see ALL the options that are available to me. If what I'm looking for has been sitting there in the menu the whole time, I'll probably make the connection instantly.

I'm not a programmer or a graphic artist. I draw stick-men. I'm just an end user; I play games and get the occasional idea to design a game that I'd like to play. When I first open a program, I want to see lots of options/buttons/etc.  Usually the first thing I do is look through the menus to get a sense of how powerful the program is.  If it doesn't look powerful enough, I'm not going to bother learning how to use it in the first place.

I agree with M57 regarding the progressive disclosure / noob mode. Maybe some tooltips pointing to the help file would be better.

It seems like the continent min option would be quite easy to do.

Te be honest, I could care less about progressive disclosure... I think I have a pretty good understanding of the options available on WarGear.  I just wanted continent restrictions, and I figured it might either get cluttered or confusing.

I think progressive disclosure is least useful for the designer, but I still feel like from a player perspective the site could be a bit more newb friendly.

Edward Nygma wrote:

Te be honest, I could care less about progressive disclosure... I think I have a pretty good understanding of the options available on WarGear.  I just wanted continent restrictions, and I figured it might either get cluttered or confusing.

Factories have proven to be a very powerful designer tool, but I think there's also no question that they are the most cluttered/confusing feature.

I agree with O that confusion is more likely to arise on the player end of things.  I''ve been thinking that the Description page is often inadequate for many of the more complex boards out there.   We've talked about dedicated forum threads for boards and that would be a start, but I'd like to see a more comprehensive Description page - perhaps with the ability to include graphics.

Consider that Ed has started threads to explain how to play some of his boards..